For the moment, the apps will continue to operate individually, but an eventual combination (if it occurs) would congeal Google’s music offering to customers.

At Present, Google Play Music and YouTube Music are separate but complementary apps:

YouTube Music is a streaming app reconstructs the listening experience on YouTube into a standalone audio-only app. It’s built around playlists, personalized stations and a near endless catalog of songs. Another way to think about YouTube Music is the music component of YouTube Red minus the price and perks of a paid subscription.

Google Play Music is both a music streaming service and a cloud-based music locker wherever users will transfer and store songs from their personal catalogs. It has a streaming catalog of over 30 million songs and lets users save to fifty thousand songs from their own collection on the app. It’s tied into the Google Play app store, where users obtain and transfer their desired songs.

YouTube Red, meanwhile, is the company’s paid subscription service. At $9.99 a month, it gives users ad-free access to YouTube music and video, and the ability to play content offline and within the background while the screen is off or once running another app. A subscription to YouTube Red gives users full access to each YouTube Music and Google Play Music.

But this the latest sign that YouTube Music and Google Play Music are happier collectively. Google already combined the business development teams from each app last year. Driven by an urge to change its relationship with the music business, the move streamlined Google’s negotiations with music copyright holders — publishers, labels, and artists — by consolidating Google’s music partnerships to a single point of contact.